


A Hundred Years of Night

by greenasphodel



Category: Final Fantasy XV
Genre: Age of Apocalypse, Denial, F/M, Gap Filler, Gen, Grief/Mourning, I know why the tales are told, M/M, Ultimate Sacrifice, back from the dead
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2017-02-23
Updated: 2017-06-15
Packaged: 2018-09-26 10:46:21
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 3
Words: 6,616
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9891200
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/greenasphodel/pseuds/greenasphodel
Summary: When Noctis emerges from the crystal a decade later, he has to gather up his band of traveling brothers to go fight Ardyn.  It came as a shocker, then, that they all had lives of their own.





	1. 0. Episode Noctis

You were suspended, in a space filled with darkness and many-colored light, blazing like an aurora, coiling and twining around you, as if they were gravitated towards you.  You could see the stars in the distance, specks that were meant to draw out patterns; Ignis would be disappointed, you were meant to have learned all the astronomy.  He had spent many an evening going over the lessons with you.  At the time, you felt it acutely unfair that you had to learn all these other things aside from your school lessons.  Being royalty didn’t mean you had a larger brain or whatever.  Politics and maybe even geography you understood grudgingly, but astronomy?

But now you understood.

You felt that way about a lot of things now, and you felt guilty about being such a sullen, single-minded brat most of the time.

It was strange, breathing—it felt like you were inhaling something liquid and air at the same time.  You weren’t sure _what_ you were feeling, actually.  At times it felt like absolutely nothing—no sight, no hearing, no smell, no touch.

You weren’t sure how long you spend here, but it felt like _ages_. You were convinced you were dying at one point (perhaps a month? A night? Hard to tell)—didn’t they say that your life was supposed to pass by when you died?  Your life was a long one though, not by the years but by how much had happened, so it must have taken a while.

You remembered being young in a large palace, where everything seemed so large and tall, especially your father, in his dark cloak.  Black was the color of Lucis, the color of gravitas and steadfastness, your father always said.  You remembered when you were broken and almost dead: his hand on your head, the warmness of his skin against your clammy skin, his tears matching the pitter-patter against the window.  You remembered his limp as he walked towards you, seeing you off on the journey you now know he knew to be your last.  You remembered being afraid of his stern face whenever he summoned you, although you would _never_ have admitted that to Gladiolus.  You remembered when his hair used to be black like your own.  You remembered that photo of him in his youth, looking almost exactly like you, but with less hair in his eyes.  You remembered when he started looking at you all sad—the day after Lunafreya collapsed after an overwhelming vision.  You remembered the scratchy tickle of his beard, back when he used to hug you.  You remembered crashing the Regalia when you drove around the bend too quickly and his sigh as you and Prompto stood before him, mortified at being caught stealing your old man’s car.  You remembered, you supposed, what fatherly love felt like.

You remembered Luna, your only friend for a very long time.  You couldn’t even imagine the loneliness you would have felt if she wasn’t there by your side.  You weren’t always a nice kid, and when you lashed out, she always just smiled kindly, and sometimes took your hand gently.  She assured you that you _were_ nice, and kind, and smart, and brave, and every attribute that you secretly yearned for but was afraid were just fundamentally not in you.  You wanted to make her proud, to live up to her version of you.  You remembered this one kid in school joking about how she always dressed in white and you in black and therefore you were bound to be enemies, and you remembered beating this kid up with Prompto.  (Or at least, that was what you told Ignis, and he politely pushed up his glasses and did not comment on your swollen eye.)  You remembered her telling you how the world worked with infinite conviction and wisdom, even though she was ten and just a head taller than you.  You remembered dreaming about her after she went away.  Those were the comforting dreams, not the ones of fire and gore, and you cherished them, just like you cherished any memories of her—because after all, truth be told, after years and years, you were starting to forget what her smile looked like.  But you always remembered her voice.

But most of all, you remembered the trip.  When it first started, it was just a massive road trip for you and your closest (only) friends, getting out of the city and going to fetch Luna—even amid the mounting political pressure and the sense that everything was going wrong, it still was fun and the best of times.  The landscape that rolled by, breathtaking and surreal—you never thought you would actually see something like the _sea_ , although you’ve seen plenty of pictures. The camping: although uncomfortable, you honestly enjoyed gathering around the fire and it always seemed like a minor miracle the way Ignis was able to produce gourmet food out of nothing.  You saw caves, ruins, forests, mountains, cities—everything, together.  You couldn’t imagine even taking a single step out of Insomnia without those three.  You remembered Ignis, who had been with you longer than anybody, whose patience was as endless as his resolve.  You remembered Gladiolus, who was a big hulking teddy bear, really, when you poked at his core, whose fierceness was matched by his gentle love for the land and his sister.  And you remembered Prompto, who was as much a haven for you as you were for him all throughout school, who could never be convinced that other people could like him.

You missed them.  So much.

But the white light was filling the world, and your ring started flashing hotly.

You knew it was time.


	2. Episode Prompto

He wasn’t dead, you had to explain to literally _everybody_ , like, _all_ the time.  He wasn’t dead, just part of the crystal.  And no, that was _not_ the same thing.  Noct was just… snoozing, ya know, like he did a hundred times in the back of the Regalia, like a bear during winter, or a frog that burrowed into the riverbank—or were those fish?  Ignis called it being dormant, like when the snow laden await the first shoot of spring to break the earth (Iggy was always so poetic when he wanted to convince himself).  It was basically just a long nap.  Noct was famous for those.  (So would he wake up when the sun rose, or would the sun rise when he woke?)

You did not appreciate how people always said, ‘Of course, Prompto, of course,’ as if they were talking to a silly child who didn’t want to admit that he was wrong.

The only good thing that came out of this endless night was that your gleefully snapped photos were prized for the ‘artful depiction of light’.  You won every gala award and even started your own little gallery, before…well, before everybody had to move because everywhere was too dangerous.  Very soon, few people cared for ‘useless art’.

Except art was not useless: it was important, it like, got things to be weightless when they weighed a ton; like water.  It lifted when everything seemed to press you down to drive into the ground.  It was something to think about when getting out of bed was hard.  You couldn’t find an eloquent way of putting it, but art could _never_ be useless, you thought as you pulled out your wallet and gently slid out that photo.  Even with the utmost care, the edges were frayed, but the paper remained crisp white because there was no light to yellow it.  It was a photo of the four of you, right here at Hammerhead, when the journey had just started, and it was just a road trip with your best buds for a grand old time before Noct got hitched.

A bachelor party, you had thought.

You were used to being wrong, but oh boy, just how wrong.

In the immediate aftermath of the darkness descending, you, Ignis, and Gladio ran around _everywhere_ trying to fight daemons and help the people.  It was kinda like how it was when Noct was around, and still, even after years, you would turn and wink to the empty, sullen air beside you.

Ignis was the first to leave.  It was, he had said, a futile effort to aimlessly swing a sword against air, where each slice was just a temporary parting of miniscule air particles before all the human effort was enveloped again by the very same air.  You refused to understand what he meant, but that didn’t stop him.

You traveled with Gladio for another year or so, slicing air and whatnot, until Gladio also left, with a traveling band of mercenaries, one of whom an old buddy of his apparently.  (You were, you had thought, also an old buddy.)  To be fair, Gladio did invite you along, but the both of you knew it was time to part: battle and blood never sang to you the same way it did to Gladio.  It must be his Amicitia blood, or just insanity, and who was to say it wasn’t the same thing?

You wandered around for a bit before returning to Hammerhead, because where else could you go?

It was just old Cid when you got there, lounging on that goddamn chair with that goddamn smirk of his, looking at you as if saying ‘you took your time’.

 _Where’s Cindy_ , you had asked him.

Cid puffed smoke and squinted at you through the ring of the smoke, which was irritatingly round and unbroken, unlike any of your attempts to play cool and blow smoke rings.  At least you were better than Noct—

 _Is she,_ you remembered the cold weight of your stomach, afraid to finish the question.

Cid gave a short bark of a laugh, _Not_ , he had said, _before these old bones of mine_.

You left Cid alone, because Cid seemed like the sort of guy who wanted solitude, but mostly because there was little to say to him.  Your knowledge of cars had its limits, and Cid mostly replied in grunts anyway.

Hammerhead had never been much of a hub, but at least before the Night it was a necessary pit stop on a long country road.  Now it was a refugee camp of the old, the stubborn, and the occasional bounty hunter—half a dozen people inside the fortified garage that Cid and Cindy cleaned out, cramming their workshop machines to a corner in order to accommodate the living. 

The first thing you did after coming back full circle to Hammerhead was to help move the streetlights.  There were six lamp posts that have been abandoned since the electricity grid shut down, but the glass tops could still house old-school oil lamps, so you carved the metal rods out of the earth and planted them around the garage like tent pegs.  The oil flames burned differently from the electric ones, unsteady licks of warm toned fire that jammed against the glass panels like some caged panther instead of the consistent blue-white glow of manmade light.  It was barely enough light to deter the daemons, but the presence calmed the residents.

Placebo, you remembered one of Ignis’s sneers.

The second week, Cindy came back, with a tolled piece of wreckage that she caressed like she did the Regalia.  Cindy, bless her soul, looked the exact same, rocking the same smoking hot outfit and happy-go-lucky grin, the sort that you put on until you believed it to be part of you.

 _Well, well_ , she had said, sounding smug and welcoming at the same time, _look what the cat dragged in_ , as two muscles behind her dragged in her car wreck.

 _I’m back_ , you said cheekily.

Cindy opened her mouth and looked as if she was about to say ‘for what’, but luckily she didn’t.  Instead, she nodded, cracked her knuckles, and said, _Well then make yourself useful ‘round these parts, you ain’t pretty enough to just sit still._

She was glad to see you, you could tell, even if she denied it.

Between you, the relentlessly cheerful Cindy, and the relentlessly dour Cid, Hammerhead stayed open all these years.  Twice it came close to game over for this little remnant of an old life.  The first time, it was a year into your uninvited stay; one night a particularly light-insensitive Red Giant wandered too close to Hammerhead, and after a fierce debate, a vote between the residents (all nine of them at the time), and almost mutiny, it was decided that you and this one-eyed bounty hunter would go take it down.  It was a hopeless battle—back in the day, the four of you had taken down Red Giants before, but that was with a team who could read each other’s brainwaves, not just you and the wimp who ran off in the opposite direction once Cid booted the two of you out.  In the end Cindy had drawn its attention away with a self-driving car.  You preferred to forget this incident.

The other time was just over seven months ago.  Hammerhead had since swelled into a small town, close to what it had been before.  The garage had been expanded over and over again, metal compartments added as the size of the population grew and grew, until it looked like some Frankenstein-ed monster.  One day, Cid shooed everybody out and blew the whole damn thing apart.  You kept a bonfire going as the thirty people came together and built a new Hammerhead forte from scratch.  Most of those thirty people were still here—which was kind of strange and cool considering how high people turned over at Hammerhead.  After sweat and labor, the loose group of people had grown into a community, which was totally good, but also totally bad, because this stupid dude asked Cindy to marry him.

Cindy didn’t agree, of course, but what killed you was that she didn’t exactly say no either.  She sort of just looked at him funnily, chuckled, heaved him up from his one-knee kneel, and never said anything about it.

Today, you were planning on your own grand gesture—not proposal, man, you weren’t stupid like that creepy fucker, no, just asking her out and maybe casually mentioning how you’d been in love with her since, oh, forever.  (Gladio once said that you sought women with strong character because you lacked it; that was the last time you talked to him about girls.)

It happened as you were walking back from hunting, a lean Sabertusk carcass over your shoulders, mulling how you would word your offer (although retrospectively, in all honesty, you probably would have broken down before actually asking her out).  Out of the deep Night, you thought you heard somebody call your name.

You paused.  Nah.  Yet there was it again, coming from behind you.  You quickly whipped out your trusty Death Penalty pistol because this wouldn’t be the first time that some rogue bandit tried to rob your game.

 _Prompto_ , the same voice was coming closer but not growing any louder, as if the thick darkness ate away the sound.

You lowered the Sabertusk and lifted your other Drillbreaker arm (it took you like, a year to realize that Gravity Well was a hoot only with melee support).

Some figure slowly emerged out of the ink—a man, probably, tall and thin-ish, and you thought with relief that okay, not that much heavier than you, you could definitely take this one on.

Relief turned into gut uneasiness as the figure got closer, until from the jumpy oil lamp light behind you, you could make out the man’s face.

Noct.

Your Noct.

Prince Noctis Lucis Caelum of Lucis.

He was like, two inches taller and way, way more bearded, but you recognized him instantly even with less bangs.  You must have stood there gaping for a good minute.  Noct walked over slowly with deliberation or hesitation, smiling (although it was hard to tell with all the facial hair) and maybe about to hug you?  But given your utter stillness and silence, he stopped a step away and frowned lightly.

For some reason the only vaguely lucid thought you had during this time was that _man_ , this was a much better look on Noct.

“Cool beard”, you said uneasily, foot in mouth as usual.

“Thanks,” he said tentatively, “I’m uh, back.”

The nervous half-stutter in his voice broke you out of your stupor and you jumped on him ferociously and possibly screaming.  _You fucking bastard!  You stupid bastard, you’ve been gone for so—you, I can’t, it’s you!  Oh my god I can’t—I—_

Later, when you broke the news to Cindy and Cid, you said that the two of you had a manly hug.  Noct, the little piece of shit, smirked and told Cindy that you had broken down sobbing and fell against him so hard that the both of your collapsed onto the ground on account of his strained right leg.

“Traitor,” you beamed at Noct’s chuckle, and clasped his back.

You couldn’t tell if you were trembling or him, or both.

Noct turned to smile at you, and dammit, you couldn’t control your eyes from getting watery.  Men weren’t supposed to cry, especially not in public.

“I’ve missed you”, he said.

Not fair, you thought through your unstoppable waterworks.  Fortunately the rest of the Hammerhead folks left quietly, unable to standing the sight of you two bawling like three year olds.

But now they would know that you were right all along.  Now they would know you weren’t crazy, or in denial, or delusional, or anything but the best sidekick a hero could ask for.

All that was left was to track down the other two motherfuckers and the show on the road.  When you told Noct that Gladio and Ignis weren’t here, he looked confused for a second before looking ashamed for his confusion.  “It won’t be hard,” you promised falsely—you had no idea where they were.

“Yeah, it’ll fun,” he said, “just like old times,” he said.

You laughed with a hitch to your throat.  But it was true: with the centerpiece of your group back, the old band could get back together now, and you could all go out with a bang.

Because you were now thirty and far too worldly to think that either Noct or you would live for much longer now that Noct was back to finish the business.


	3. Episode Gladiolus

You kicked a corpse over with your right foot, so that the face—or what was left of it—became exposed.  The lower abdomen on the corpse was shredded by what seemed to be Gargoyle claws; the intestines spilled out like congealed blackened spaghetti, crunching as the corpse was turned.  Just like your cooking, you thought with callous amusement.  There was nothing around the neck.

You moved on to the next one.  This one had a clean cut to the neck, a stump with even the spine evenly like a mannequin or something; a Ronin’s or Yojimbo’s blade work, considering that you were in Cleigne.  You bent down to pat the neck area, ignoring the maggots and flies swarming around the wound; the front of the shirt, damp from possibly rain or other unsavory liquids, was worn in a spot, but it wasn’t a rectangular shape.  No cigar.

The third had died more recently, the entire body had been seared by acid from a daemon of the Flan family.  What a way to go, you thought, to be burned alive by saliva.  Fabric, flesh, and bones were melted together in weird colored splotches, and you didn’t bother looking further because metal would not have persevered.

“Aha! Found it!”

You turned around to see one of your comrades grinning wildly.  She raised an arm and wiped her face against the tanned leather of her forearm and smeared dirt and blood streaks even more across her face, looking absolutely feral with her bird’s nest of a head (a nonchalant bun, she called it).  Despite being a ranged fighter using firearms and automated bows, she seemed adamant to be just as grimy as the rest of you, in compensation of either her range or her gender or her relative young age.  In her other hand she triumphantly dangled a rectangular metal necklace above her head.

Only Vita, you chuckled with resignation or fondness, could treat finding an old outlaw’s son’s fucking tag as some sort of victory to lord over the rest of you.

Behind you, you could hear the sound of Cassian plunging the sharp end of his shield into the overturned earth with, you imagined, a roll of his eyes.

Fabius, ahead of you, tossed his twin daggers up in the air and juggled like a clown, his lean frame bobbing in rhythm to his expert hand movements.  He even freed a hand for a moment to slick back a stray lock of sandy hair.  It was getting too long for battles; you _had_ always disapproved of the prince’s and Promoto’s ungainly hair.  Unpractical.  Your team hadn’t stopped in a real city in a while, that reminded you.  Not that, really, there were many ‘real cities’ left.  Another couple of weeks, Fab’d need to resort to badgering Cass to do the honors again and face Vita’s ridicule.

“Quit it Fatass,” Vita said hotly, “You’re taking attention away from my conquest.”

“Your Majesty, Vita the Conqueror of Maggots and Larvae,” Fabius grinned at her, pricking at Vita’s short temper as was his pastime.  You realized that you hadn’t ever called Noctis Your Majesty before—even now you thought of him in your head as your prince.

Vita’s face turned into a snarl but before she could tear into Fabius (or try to anyway, Vita might have been the better fighter, but words, not her battleground). You called out, “Alright, camp for the night upwind a half mile to the southeast.  We’ll head back to Meldacio first light tomorrow morning.”

Vita gave a loud ‘humph’ in Fabius’s direction and briskly started marching southeast.  The other corner of Fabius’s mouth tugged up into a full smile as he sheathed his daggers and trailed after her, close enough for her to try to swat him but not close enough for her to hit.  Cass nudged you with his shoulder as he too followed Vita.

This was your team now, a ragtag bunch of ex-military, ex-con, and scrappy youth.

It had started out with just you, Cassian, and Aetius.

You had run into these two while killing time in that crap motel in Longwythe that the four of you used to favor.  Ignis had left months ago, and Prompto followed you blindly like he had blindly followed Noctis and then Ignis, but you didn’t have a shit’s clue as to how best spend your time.  There was no Crownsguard to go back to, no country to pledge to, no world you could save.  You and Prompto aimlessly crossed the country and slaughtered whatever daemons came into your path, but you were edgy every day.  There was no goal in sight, and the Amicitias _always_ had a goal.

So when Cassian, whom you knew via his cousin Pelna from what used to be the Kingslaive, approached you with a flask of Lucis’s best, you allowed your tongue to be looser than what was considered wise; even old friends turned out to be new enemies, let alone just a familiar face.  (His face though, absolute splitting image, if you had been drunker you would swear you saw a ghost, the same olive skin, the same black hair that took like a fucking hour to look windswept, and the same dark suspicious eyes).  You wouldn’t have trusted Cassian with the prince’s details even back in the day, but somehow, letting a hint of bitterness seep into your words about your days now felt okay, felt natural, felt like it belonged to the night.  What was a guard without something to guard?  What was a soldier without a general?  What was an Amicitia without a King?

In return, Cassian told you about Pelna Khara of the former Kingsglaive, may he find rest.  They might not have been brothers, but they had been raised together ever since they were babies; they were bullied together when they were five, turned into bullies together at nine, fled together to Insomnia at fifteen, served together under the same King, and by all means they should have died together.  But Pelna, along with practically every member of the goddamned cursed Kingsglaive, died.  And there was Cassian, left alone in more ways than one.

Deep talk, huh.  Well, that’s what you get when two old-timers get real shitfaced.

In the morning you found your coin pouch empty and some drunken promise made to join Cassian’s bounty hunter team.  ‘The Dauntless Duo’, he had said proudly of their cheesy name, ‘could be the Tremendous Threesome.’

‘Tremendous Threesome,’ you had deadpanned.

Cassian had winked, and you couldn’t help but laugh because it seemed like such a Prompto joke to make.

Ah, yes, Prompto was angry, justifiably (you two were all that was left of what once was an unshakable brotherhood), but you could see he was also sad, which shook you more—but not enough.

‘You can join us,’ you had said to the miserable man, looking smaller and more washed out than you remembered him being.

He just shook his head dejectedly, as you knew he would.  The guilt would forever haunt you, because you had felt relieved, just a little bit, at his rejection.  You were a pretty shit friend, huh.  But you had always been a great guard, a great soldier, and then, a great hunter.

Taking down contracts gave you purpose: short termed purpose, but nevertheless, you slept better.

Aetius was the leader of the group, a man older by some undetermined amount: it was hard to tell  if his hair was white or white-gold, and his wrinkles could have come from either age or a tough life.  He smoked a shit ton, talked very little, but was otherwise reliable and almost friendly.  Or maybe you just missed the cool stares of Ignis and the taciturn princeling.

One contract took you to Cape Caem.  You were overjoyed to see your little sis, although Iris didn’t seem quite as happy to see you sans Noctis.  You had never stopped her harmless little crush on Noct because you figured it was just a strange phase of teenage girlhood.  You weren’t sure if it was a mistake on your part, but it was too late to fix it anyhow.

Surprisingly but happily, Cor Leonis had also returned to the same lighthouse inn.  Cor had seen Ignis in Lestallum a month ago.  You glowed with pride to hear that Ignis was now considered one of the crucial pillars of the refuge center of humanity.  Cor didn’t share your enthusiasm completely, uncomfortable with the idea of a former comrade’s flight to another political scene, but you convinced him that no matter where Ignis was, there were only two things that he served: the people and his prince.

You had a moment for the prince.

Then you learned that Cor had brought his daughter (he had a daughter?) here in a growingly futile attempt to have her stay put.  The girl stubbornly wanted to go out into the world and be a bounty hunter as well.  As a father, he was proud of her independence and gusto, but he couldn’t possibly let her wander the dangerous era of eternal night alone.

You laughed and commiserated over how your little sister was a fucking handful in the exact same way.

Cor turned to you with a strange light in his eyes.

And that was how Vita joined your party, and Iris his.

It had taken a lot of persuasion and a couple of plates shattered, but eventually the two girls went along with the plan.  Vita resented you for a long time.  She said you and Cor had ‘traded hostages’, just because the two of them couldn’t stand the two of you, and it was wildly unfair.  It was unfair, you agreed, because Iris and you got along just fine; even Vita and Cor got along more or less fine, for a father and daughter pair who barely saw each other ever.

Cor was a legend—you had always looked up to Cor because even your father had looked up to Cor—but everybody knew he wasn’t so much a father as a vague presence in Vita’s life.  In fact, you hadn’t even know Cor had family.  Sometimes, legends outgrew their own self, and it seemed strange to think that Cor the Immortal had been born of a father and mother, had love and sex, was of flesh and blood and bones like any other person.

Vita had grown up running the streets of the capital.  Her father gave her a roof over her head and enough coin for food, but even when he was in the capital, he stayed at an inn, preferring paid hospitality and cleanliness to the hassle of inevitable household chores like washing and trash.  Her mother had died before she could retain memories, and whenever anybody talked about the warm memories of a mother’s voice or a mother’s touch as a baby, she scoffed and called them a liar, because she definitely didn’t have any.  In that way, she was more like an orphan than some of the orphans, but all the King’s men were her parents and all street urchins her protégé.  As such, she grow up with the indulgence of adults (any mischief or mistake wasn’t her fault, and it wasn’t their place to punish her, only to dote on her with small candies and a pat on her head) and the adoration of kids (street savvy youths knew to suck up to the right people, and who was more ‘right’ than a small kid with bottomless pockets, limitless candy, and a pompous sense of justice whenever they complained?—So was she their leader or their fool? Eh, did it matter?).

Your old man had been one of those who gave her more sweets than he did you, but you were already beyond the age to be placated by sweets or be envious of a wild-haired girl who was a head shorter than your little sister.

Vita’s animosity towards you only ended when you picked up Fabius.

The four of you—that was, Aetius, Cass, Vita, and you—had started a contract in Fociaugh Hollow.  It had been a routine hunt, but during the night you received an uninvited caller.

Fabius, who at the time looked like a bum in patched clothes and mismatched daggers, halfway between suspect and vulnerable, had snuck to their camp.  He wasn’t forthright at first, but soon enough it was clear that he had hustled in the wrong place and now a Galvanades bomb was on his trail.

Vita, guardian angel of all waifs, immediately puffed and said that don’t worry, they’d take care of it, just warm yourself up at the fire and watch the pros handle it.

Turned out that Fabius wasn’t completely forthright then either, because it wasn’t a bomb that came at them, but a string of these assholes.  Fabius, to his credit, got up from toasting his feet at the fire and joined the fight.

It was either bad luck or the straw that broke the camel’s back, but Aetius and Fabius were both caught straight in the heart of a sudden suicide explosion from a large bomb lurking by the peripherals.  Fabius had scrambled up, tattered and bleeding, but Aetius stayed down.  By luck or chance or altruism, Aetius had blocked the majority of the thunder from Fabius, and the shock to his heart was too much for a hunter on the road for so long.

And that was that for Aetius.

After the battle, Vita, bless her young heart, just stood there helplessly.  She didn’t know what to do—she didn’t know that there was nothing to do.  Fabius looked properly rueful, but it might have been because he was expected to be rueful.  Cassian was like you, and too hardened by life to show much more than a grimace.

It was at least a soldier’s death.

‘Time to put out camp and move on,’ you had said, and with that became the de facto leader of those remained.

Fabius tailed your party without any discussion.  He was a self-proclaimed artist, which meant he was a street entertainer/circus performer/stagehand/magician, which really meant that he was a thief/gambler/grifter/beggar.  In actuality, Fabius was skilled beyond the general small time crook: he was quick of wit and sleight of finger, had the best three card Monte hand you had ever seen and the next-best dagger tricks.  What he lacked was ambition, which wasn’t necessarily a disadvantage, you thought about Prompto.  Then you thought about Noctis and decided that sometimes a lack of ambition was a luxury.

It wasn’t until three days after that you found you had ‘misplaced’ your change coin pouch.  Fabius had tossed it back to you when you were patting yourself down at a gas station to pay for a drink, sort of conflicted about being ashamed or brazen.

Nevertheless, you couldn’t help but like this kid, who looked shorter than he was because he habitually slouched slightly; who only knew how to smile off-kilter, an inconspicuous kind of handsomeness blooming when he did; whose face was deceivingly shy; whose age was also a mystery because he looked and behaved young but you felt like he wasn’t; whose fingers could not stay still and always picked at something just like his words picked at someone or other; who went through life thick skinned and tongue in cheek.  He reminded you of—you weren’t sure who, but definitely somebody, or a mishmash of somebodies.  Or maybe that was his charm, that he made everybody feel that way, and be irrationally fond of him.

Vita, though, hated this kid (who was probably definitely older than her).

At first you thought she blamed him for Aetius’s death, which was stupid but perhaps somewhat understandable, but you weren’t there to understand people.  You berated her for it, and when she burst into fury you realized that no, she hated him because she felt like you were replacing Aetius.  Which was also stupid but somehow you felt sorry for her instead of angry at her.

Vita gave Fabius hell.  Fabius gave it back to her in equal or more amounts.  She was trying to drive him away, yet he stayed.  It was a wonder that Vita neither left herself nor took it out on you and Cass.  Perhaps you weren’t giving enough credit to her.

“This spot good, boss?” Vita had a way of saying ‘boss’ like she was sarcastic even when she wasn’t (or you didn’t think she was; after the first year, she had settled into your care grudgingly).

“Yeah,” you said, looking at the bodies strewn along the road not far from where Vita was pointing, littered casually like a stray plastic bag or empty bottle, “Good as any.”  It didn’t seem like you were getting a better place.  At least they weren’t rotting too badly, and none of you were squeamish about the smell.  One inevitably got used to the sight of corpses after a while, as one got used to anything and everything.  There were simply too many dead bodies everywhere for one to be sensitive.

As a soldier, you knew that maintaining the right mentality towards the dead was the secret to living long and strong.  Strength of hand, strength of mind, as Ignis said.  Yet the world wasn’t turning into a better place because of you or Ignis or Prompto.  What strength did you have left?

“How’s spaghetti for dinner?” Fab asked.  Apparently you weren’t the only one who saw those intestines.  Fab wasn’t a great cook but he would do in a pinch.

You supposed that your strength was now taking care of this motley crew.

But it wasn’t your best idea to camp there, because sometimes during the night, the draw of fresh meat—scavengers feasting on nearby carcass and the warm smell of four live human bodies—overcame the light from the shivering fire, and they were sieged by a Chandravarma giant and his crony of Galvanades bombs.

What was your bad luck with Galvanades anyway.

Any time multiple bombs accompanied a giant was tricky, and they weren’t exactly well stocked right now.  The Galvanades kept setting up explosions that summoned more Thunder Bombs, and quickly the situation got dire.

If you had Prompto, he would Gravity Well the shit out of these fuckers, and you would follow up with a grand frontal sweep, and Noct would switch to elemental weapons, and then Ignis would Overwhelm the giant.

Instead Cass herded the bombs together with swift shield attacks in range for you to swing your greatswords, Vita shot the bombs in waves as she dodged the trampling footsteps of the giant, and Fabius threw rocks and dirt to taunt the giant as he sliced-and-dashed over and over again.  The tides turned when you amassed enough energy for an Impulse sweep attack, which took care of all but one of the Thunder Bombs and the wobbling giant that was now three quarters done for.  Vita took out the bomb with another shot, with Fabius cursing loudly as he rolled away from the resulting explosion.

The next part should have played out in slow motion, but in truth, you couldn’t even recall how it happened.  Just at some point you looked over (because Vita was making ungodly noise, but that wasn’t uncommon), and there was Cass, on the ground, his spine twisted in a way that wasn’t proper and his arm ripped off.  There wasn’t even that much blood. The wound just bled into the overturned ground that drank it all up.

‘Huh’, you thought maybe a little too dispassionately, ‘so it’s his turn.’

You looked up at the giant and saw that it was waving around the torn arm, maybe intending to use it as a mace, but the effect was darkly comical due to the small size of the arm contrasted with the massive giant.

The end of battle brought zero cheer from your party.  It was dangerous to stay put in the same spot for very long, but the three of you took the time to dig a hasty ditch and buried Cassian’s body.  Vita suggested a headstone but you there was no time and what would have been the use anyway?  Headstones and flowers were for the living.

Cass had gotten as proper a funerary ritual as it came in the eternal night.

“At least it was a soldier’s death,” you told the two young ones, but the echo of what you had thought about Aetius rang hollow.

“Yeah,” Vita said halfheartedly.

“Death is death,” Fabius disputed.

Even Vita had no heart to squabble with Fabius.

“Sleep for anybody?”  You got silent shakes of heads in response.  “Let’s move on then,” you said.

Move along, let’s go, head forward.  Eventually everyone dies, and the details of one’s death were only as important as one wanted it to be.

You didn’t know if it was healthier to feel like you did, or be stricken like Vita (who was used to death but not death of people she knew), or just cynical like Fab.  Just what did you feel like, anyway?


End file.
